


wandering through our city to find some solace at your door

by QLaLa



Series: draw me close [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Feelings, Fluff, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-15 00:42:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11794857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QLaLa/pseuds/QLaLa
Summary: “You left in kinda a hurry this morning,” Barry said, and Len closed his eyes against the almighty hell he knew that sentence had just unleashed in the room behind him.





	wandering through our city to find some solace at your door

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [wandering through our city to find some solace at your door](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12059748) by [MaryNevskaya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryNevskaya/pseuds/MaryNevskaya)



> This is a sequel to "and in your heat I feel how cold it can get;" it can work as a stand-alone, but I recommend reading that first!
> 
> Title from the same song, Bastille's "Warmth." Many thanks to my beta, Elizabeth!

The debriefing from the bank job had begun to deteriorate into complaints of hunger and exhaustion, as well as renewed demands to know where Len had disappeared to the night before, when a quiet knock on the front door caught Len’s attention. 

The Rogues had a very specific knock for getting into safe houses, and this wasn’t that knock. Len felt a headache coming on; no good (if not entirely selfless) deed really did go unpunished, apparently.

He wished he could ignore it, but the others would likely notice if it sounded again, so he pushed his chair back from the table with a sigh. He left the chain on the door as he pulled it open, and, predictably, found himself staring down a pair of nervous green eyes. 

“What,” Len said. To his surprise, Barry dropped his gaze skittishly, and a hint of pink appeared at the top of his cheeks. Len tilted his head, intrigued. 

“I brought—”

Barry thrust out a bundle that Len recognized as his coat, and he raised an eyebrow. The others hadn't seen Barry yet, with Len blocking the doorway, and he tried to indicate with a quirk of his eyebrow that this wasn't the best time. 

He should've expected Barry could dig himself deeper even without his help. 

“You left in kinda a hurry this morning,” Barry said, and Len closed his eyes against the almighty hell he knew that sentence had just unleashed in the room behind him. “It was on the chair, I thought—” 

“Mail it,” Len said shortly, and tried to slam the door shut. He was stopped by Lisa’s hand closing over his on the doorknob, nails biting into his skin as she held the door firmly in place. 

“Lenny, you're not gonna leave that poor boy out in the cold now, are you?” Lisa crooned. Barry’s eyes went comically wide as he realized at last that Len wasn't alone, and Len glared back without pity. “And after he came all this way to see you.”

There was a slight warning in her voice that Len had no trouble interpreting; this wasn't the kind of address Len should've been giving out to one-night stands. 

“No, uh, you know what? You're right, I'll just stick this in a mailbox—”

Barry started to beat a hasty retreat, and Lisa tried to wrest the door open against Len’s counter efforts. Then Hartley crowed a laugh from somewhere behind them, and Barry stopped short, recognition and something close to dread in his face. 

“No,” Hartley said, scandalized. Len, knowing when he was defeated, let go of the door. Lisa didn't notice, though, too busy giving Hartley an affronted look over her shoulder. 

“Is that Allen?” Hartley asked gleefully. 

“You know him?” Lisa asked, voice petulant. 

“Of course. He’s the beanpole in all of Cisco’s Facebook pictures.” 

Len sighed internally, and Lisa crossed her arms.

“My Cisco?” she demanded. Barry looked at him helplessly. He seemed to consider flashing away, but like hell he was leaving Len alone to deal with this. Len slipped the chain off the door and stepped aside. 

As soon as Barry stepped sheepishly into the room, Lisa’s stormy expression cleared, replaced momentarily with one of recognition before she schooled her features into a feline smile. 

“Well, hello, sweet thing,” she said. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

A hint of color had crept into Barry’s cheeks, but he rolled his eyes at this. 

“I'm pretty sure we’re the same age,” he said. Lisa threw Len a scandalized look, which he answered with a scowl. 

“My, my,” she said. “I bet Cisco would like to hear about  _ this." _

“Oh, he knows. Trust me,” Barry muttered, and Len could guess that he'd seen the pictures from that morning. 

“And he didn't tell me?” Lisa demanded, all coquettishness dropped in an instant, and began typing something on her phone with an agitated clatter of nails against touch screen. 

Mick had been ignoring most of the exchange, more interested in sketching in a few edits to the blueprints that Hartley had abandoned on the table. But he looked up with an uninterested expression to glance at Barry, then sat forward slightly in his seat. Len saw him take note of Barry’s lanky build, then scrutinize his face. After a few moments of consideration, he snorted into his beer.

“Only you, Snart,” he said. Len glared, and Lisa and Hartley looked peevish at being left out of the joke. 

“I really just came by to drop this off,” Barry said desperately, and his gaze flickered toward Mick with something close to genuine panic. 

Lisa grabbed her keys off the counter with a sharp, decisive movement. 

“No, we were just leaving,” she said. “Weren't we, Micky?”

“I’m not gonna tell you who he is,” Mick rumbled, reaching for the blueprints again. 

“We can get Thai,” Hartley said eagerly, cottoning on to Lisa’s plan. “There’s that all-night place on Roosevelt. I’ll pay.”

Mick paused with his hand above the blueprints, clearly considering it. Lisa whirled on Barry with a victorious smile, and came forward to wrap her fingers around his upper arm. 

“We’ll talk real soon,  _ Barry," _ she promised, and didn't so much smile as bare her teeth at him. 

Barry only stared back, resigned, and her expression slipped into real amusement for a moment. Then Mick put down his beer and pushed back from the table, and she twirled away to help Hartley hurry him towards the door. 

“Guess I should just put out a press release,” Barry said, once the door had shut behind them. His mouth twisted up in a humorless smile, and Len noted the stress in his shoulders.

“Mick won't tell them,” he said, and moved towards the table that his crew had just abandoned. Barry trailed after him, glancing around the apartment if his slow footsteps were any indication. 

“So, I just wanted to…” Barry began, then trailed off.

Len took his time rolling up the blueprints, though it was really a formality. The job was done, after all, but Barry didn’t need to see what their planning looked like. Barry stayed silent as he tidied up, and when Len was finished, he leaned back against the table to give Barry an expectant look. 

Barry searched his expression for a long moment, then ducked his head with a quiet laugh. 

“I actually don't know why I'm here,” he admitted. He scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck, lips twisted up in a wry smile. 

Len considered him carefully. He looked a little apprehensive, yes, but his body language was open, one hand still on the back of his neck and the other tucked into his back pocket. He kept his gaze steady as Len looked him over, although his shoulders were tight with nervous energy.

“Thought you were returning my coat,” Len said at length, not quite able to keep a sarcastic tilt out of his voice. 

Barry looked at the bundle under his arm like he'd forgotten it was there. He shook it out with one hand and held it out toward him from a couple feet away. Len raised an eyebrow, and stayed where he was. This sudden respect for his personal space was new, and Len couldn't say he cared for it.

“If we’re gonna do this,” Len said, “Leave the lying to the professionals.”

Barry slid his hand from the back of his neck, and Len couldn't deny the prickle of heat he felt at when Barry’s expression turned into something a little more intent. 

“That all?” he asked, and Len scoffed. 

“Not by a mile,” he said. He expected the usual, a hair-raising static and the sharp crack of electricity as Barry blinked forward, but Barry hung back instead. He moved forward slowly, grin curling into something dangerous, and Len watched him with as much nonchalance as he could feign with his heartbeat pounding in his ears. 

“What, gonna make me catch you first?” he asked, a hint of impatience escaping despite his best efforts. Barry came to a stop a foot away, and Len suppressed a shiver at the heat in Barry’s eyes as he gave him an extremely thorough once-over. 

“As if you could,” Barry said. Len raised an eyebrow, slowly reached out for the beer Mick had left behind, and tipped it off the table. 

Barry caved at the last moment, flickering forward with a crackle of yellow lightning to catch the bottle an inch above the wood floor. Before he could get his footing back, Len hooked his boot behind his ankle and pulled his leg out from under him. Len caught Barry by the collar as he wheeled for balance and pulled him around, and Barry was still laughing when Len shoved him against the table and kissed him. 

It was messy and unskilled, but Len’s heart gave a treacherous lurch at the way Barry huffed against his lips as he tried to stop smiling long enough to kiss him back. He caved to the need to have him closer, and got his hands under Barry’s thighs to lift him onto the table behind him. Barry inhaled sharply, an oddly pained-sounding breath; Len started to draw back, confused, but Barry curled a hand in the front of his shirt and pulled him back in impatiently. 

Len hadn’t been considering that Barry was taller than him when he’d pushed him onto the table, but Barry only laughed and ducked his head to kiss him anyway. Len slid a hand into his hair to keep him there, and Barry spread his legs to let Len stand between his thighs. Barry braced one hand against the table to push up, lifting the other to Len’s jaw to fix the angle, and Len groaned at the first brush of Barry’s tongue against the seam of his lips. 

He tightened his hand in Barry’s hair and pulled him back just far enough to dive in and claim his mouth again. He caught Barry’s bottom lip with a scrape of teeth, and twisted his grip to drag his fingernails over Barry’s scalp. Barry arched against him with a choked whine, and Len had to break away for a breath at the force of the want that raced up his spine at the sound. 

Barry chased him forward, dragging him closer by his shirt again. He parted his lips and let Barry lick into his mouth, messy and eager, and had to swallow back an embarrassing noise of his own. Barry’s hand slid from his jaw to his neck and back up, drawing him in and holding him where he wanted him. The other slipped down his slide, exploring, and Len startled when Barry pushed it up the front of his shirt without even a questioning brush of fingers, sliding his hand up his stomach as bold as anything. 

There was a faint electricity to kissing Barry, a foreign hum under his skin that was setting all of Len’s nerves on edge in the best kind of way. Barry didn’t seem to be aware of it, even with the way it intensified when Len sucked on his tongue. Len couldn’t shake the curiosity, even with his mind quickly giving up higher functions in favor of a one-track focus on wringing another moan out of Barry. 

He dropped a hand to Barry’s thigh and traced his fingers up his inseam, and the shimmer under Barry’s skin became a buzz as Barry lost the rhythm of the kiss and gasped against his mouth. His hand tightened helplessly in the front of his shirt, and he rocked his hips forward to meet Len’s hand as it brushed over the front of his jeans. Len felt a dizzy rush of arousal when he realized Barry was already half-hard just from this.

He pulled back to look at Barry, cataloguing the color high in his cheeks, his half-shut eyes, his lips, bitten red and parted around a ragged breath. He pressed his palm roughly against Barry through the front of his jeans, and the energy under Barry’s skin spiked, and Len stumbled back in surprise when Barry full-on  _ vibrated _ against him. 

A violent blush was climbing Barry’s cheeks, and he seemed to be having trouble looking at him.

“I meant to warn you about that,” Barry said, his voice wrecked, and Len felt a smirk pull up at the corner of his mouth. 

“Thought you didn’t come here with a plan.”

Barry glanced up at him with a small grin. 

“Just leaving the lying to the professionals,” he said.

Len let the dangerous affection he felt at that draw him in again. Barry leaned in to be kissed, and Len pressed their lips together briefly before tipping Barry’s jaw up to leave a trail of kisses down his neck. 

Barry smelled a lot like cheap aftershave and a little like a hospital, the scent of antiseptic from the previous night still lingering on his skin. It reminded Len of blood on the marble floors of the bank, and the ghost of yesterday’s anxiety twisted his stomach unpleasantly. One moment Barry had been glancing over at him, bright-eyed and pleased despite the wreckage of the bank, and the after-image of his lightning had still been lingering at the edge of Len’s vision. The next he’d been across the lobby before Len could blink, shoving him away with enough force to sprain his wrist as the grenade had exploded at their feet. 

And now he was here in front of Len, kissing him like he hadn’t had a collapsed lung twelve hours ago. Like his blood hadn’t been all over Len’s clothes after he’d hauled him up off the floor, or halfway up Caitlin’s sleeves at STAR Labs as she’d pulled shrapnel out of Barry’s chest and reset his ribs, swearing fiercely under her breath the whole time. 

He thought of the injury and swept a hand up Barry’s side, needing to feel him whole and unharmed. But Barry flinched away with an aborted yelp, and Len jerked his hand back, even as Barry tried to distract him with another kiss. 

When he leaned back to stare at Barry, incredulous, Barry looked even more embarrassed than he had a minute earlier. 

“So, I really,  _ really _ do want to take you up on this,” Barry hedged. Len raised an eyebrow at ‘this,’ and Barry flushed.

“It’s just, I’m still…” Barry trailed off again, and fluttered a hesitant touch over the place Len’s hands had just been. 

“Your ribs are still broken,” Len said, voice flat with disbelief. 

The embarrassed hand Barry passed over the back of his neck was answer enough. Len remembered every rough shove and the way Barry had arched into them, broken gasps that Len realized now hadn’t been entirely from pleasure. But Barry had still urged him on, desperate despite what had to have been real pain in his side, and Len only felt a little guilty for how much that turned him on. 

“The shrapnel was holding up the healing a little,” Barry admitted, apparently oblivious to the effect he was having on him. 

Len exhaled sharply, trying to sort through the tangle of emotions jostling for position in his chest. 

“Why did you come here, Barry?” he asked. 

Barry blinked, as if this was the first time the question had occurred to him.

“I didn’t really, uh, think it through,” Barry admitted. “I wanted to see you? To see if you were, you know. Okay.”

Len huffed a breath at that, and gave in to the urge to settle a feather-light touch over the area of Barry’s ribs he had indicated a moment before. 

“To see if  _ I  _ was okay?”

Barry dropped his gaze, and Len tilted his head as he watched another blush creep up Barry’s neck.

“To see if we were okay, I guess,” Barry said.

Len was still standing between Barry’s legs, and he ran his other hand pointedly up Barry’s thigh. Barry squirmed ticklishly and huffed a self deprecating-laugh. 

“I know,” he said. “The question’s been resolved.” 

But then Barry hesitated, and he glanced up at Len with some of that strange skittishness from earlier, when he’d first shown up carrying Len’s coat.

“It’s not just that. I kind of...” Barry grimaced, as if already regretting the next words out of his mouth. “I like you?” 

Len stared at him in flat disbelief.  _ Liked _ him. Good god.

“Sorry, Barry, but I already have a date to prom,” he said, and Barry rolled his eyes. 

“Shut up, Snart,” he said. It wasn’t very intimidating, given the blush rising in his cheeks. “I thought you’d be less likely to freak out than if I said I had feelings for you.”

Len tried not to, but he froze at the words, and Barry’s eyes went wide.

“Like you’re doing right now,” he said faintly. “Because I just said it anyway.” 

Len resented the suggestion that he was "freaking out" about anything. But there was something insane about Barry sitting on his table, lips bitten red and talking about his  _ feelings _ when a few days ago, they’d been trying to kill each other. 

Well, Barry probably hadn’t ever really tried to kill him (though he seriously doubted that Barry realized how hard he could hit sometimes). And Len himself had been fairly transparent in letting his shots go wide since he’d realized how much more fun the game was with Barry around. 

There was also the small issue that Barry had actively saved his life yesterday, almost at the cost of his own. Len was embarrassed to recall the strength of his rage and helplessness as he’d waited outside the med bay as Caitlin had stitched him up. Or the last time he’d felt that, when Lewis had shot Barry point blank outside the diamond vault, when he’d seen in a couple hours what it had taken Len years to understand for himself: Barry had become a weak spot.

“Len?” Barry said, slightly concerned. Len realized he’d been quiet for probably a concerning amount of time. 

“That... complicates things,” he said, half to himself, and Barry burst out laughing. 

“How is that different from anything else in our lives?” Barry asked, tilting his head with a grin. 

And Len wanted to resent that, he really did. This was classic Barry: charging in without a second thought, or even a first one, and ignoring the twenty new problems he created along the way. 

“I’m sure your Chief would love to hear why you’re dating Captain Cold,” Len said. He’d intended a sneer on the word dating, but it came out sounding oddly self-conscious instead. 

“The CCPD doesn’t know I’m the Flash, you think I can’t keep this a secret too?” Barry asked, sailing right past ‘dating’ with no apparent objections. 

“And when I pull a job you don’t approve of?”

“First of all, I don’t approve of any of the jobs you pull,” Barry said. He ducked his head, and Len let him press a kiss to the corner of his mouth with only a half-hearted glare. “And second of all...” Another kiss, then Barry smirked against his lips. “I’ve been pulling my punches for years.” 

Len had a dozen other arguments, but it was hard to raise them when Barry was giving him that cocky smile, something relaxed and happy in his gaze that Len couldn’t bring himself to take away. And maybe Len wanted to buy into it, despite the infinite ways it could go wrong. Barring Cisco and Iris’s interruption, waking up that morning to find Barry curled around him had been… not unpleasant. He’d slept fitfully, dreaming of shrapnel and blood, but he'd woken with Barry’s limbs warm and heavy where they'd tangled with his, and his breathing soft and even against the side of Len’s neck. 

If that was the payoff, Len was beginning to think that the risk might be worth it. Barry was already under his skin; yesterday was evidence enough of that. He might as well take the consolation of having him in his bed as well. 

“I don’t think this is what they meant about keeping your enemies close,” Len said, and he traced a considering hand up the side of Barry’s neck. When he slipped his fingers into Barry’s hair, Barry ducked his head for another lingering kiss. 

“Gonna stop jumping on grenades now?” Len asked when he broke away, and Barry’s grin widened.

“I can’t promise that,” he said.

Len moved to kiss him again, but was interrupted by the sharp bang of the front door flying open. Len dove for the cold gun on instict, lying neglected on the bookshelf nearby, and Barry streaked forward to put himself between Len and the door. 

Len didn’t even get a chance to be annoyed with him for that, because Lisa, Mick, and Hartley had just reappeared in the doorway, and had definitely seen Barry move. Mick looked unsurprised, and Hartley dumbfounded, but Lisa only looked slightly put out.

“That’s the big secret, Lenny? That you’re screwing the Flash?” She dumped a near-to-bursting takeout bag on the floor, and curled one hand over Mick’s arm for balance as she pulled off her heels. “I figured that out  _ months _ ago.”

Len felt one of his eyebrows arch, but Barry looked about as staggered as Hartley did.

“You what?” Barry asked faintly. 

Unable to fight back his amusement, Len flashed him a smirk as he went to help Lisa with the food. 

“Grab a plate, kid,” Lisa said to Barry as she passed Len the bag from the floor. “I’ve got a shovel talk with your name on it.”

“It involves knives,” Mick added, not unkindly. 

Hartley still looked to be running furiously through some kind of mental calculations, but he mutely offered Barry one of the plates from the bag he was carrying anyway. 

Barry looked between them all, then back to Len in disbelief. Len let his smirk slip into something a little softer, just for a moment, and Barry sighed, and held out his hand for the plate. 

**Author's Note:**

> Confession time, I forgot until ¾ of the way through this that Hartley knows about Barry’s identity in the new timeline. But in my defense, so have the actual writers of The Flash.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and comments are appreciated!


End file.
